WHO’S ROBBING THIS COACH?
NED KELLY AND AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH
Frederick Ludowyk
APRIL 2009
VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1
PUBLISHED TWICE A YEAR
Ed i t o r i a l
In the April 2008 edition of Ozwords we
pointed out that the naming of a ‘Word
of the Year’ goes back to the early 1990s,
when the American Dialect Society began
to announce its annual choice. In 2006 the
Australian National Dictionary Centre chose
the verb and noun podcast as its Word of the
Year, and our 2007 Word of the Year was metooism, a choice that reflected the Australian
significance of this term in the drawn-out
federal election campaign that dominated
2007.
Whereas 2007 was dominated by political
terms, 2008 was more narrowly economic in
focus. 2008 was the year when not only did
we understand what subprime really meant,
but hedge funds, short selling, and toxic debt
also became the topics of morning-tea
conversations. In this climate, it was not
surprising that the American Dialect Society
chose bailout (in the specific sense of ‘the
rescue by the government of companies on
the brink of failure, including large players
in the banking industry’) as its 2008 Word
of the Year.
In Australia, the first three-quarters
of the year were dominated by the rising
interest rates that resulted from attempts to
curb inflation. It looked as if mortgage stress
(the direct result of rising interest rates)
would be the Australian Word of the Year,
and it won extra points by virtue of its being
an Australianism. But then all changed: the
world financial system collapsed, and interest
rates in Australia took a tumble. There was still
abundant stress, but it infected all economic
realms, and not just Australian mortgages.
Enter the monster: the Global Financial Crisis,
or the GFC as it came popularly to be known.
This is our 2008 Word of the Year.
Frederick Ludowyk
Editor, Ozwords
An article in the Hobart Mercury on Ned
Kelly in May 2008 posed the question:
‘Ned Kelly—hero or villain?’ The writer
answered himself by coming firmly down
in favour of the non-saintly side of the
dichotomy: ‘Despite the eulogising of Kelly
as some kind of noble figure who was much
wronged, the fact remains that he was a
criminal and a triple police murderer. …
A society that lauds a cheap, psychopathic
cop killer and elevates him to hero status
is guilty of craven double standards. We
are appalled by police deaths but make
excuses for Ned Kelly.’ Ned Kelly’s dual
reputation as both saint and sinner is no
doubt part of the reason for his continuing
iconic attraction—you just don’t fashion
folk heroes out of goody-goody nambypambies.
Indeed, it tends to be outsiders to the
particular culture who make the error of
attributing saint-like qualities to such folk
heroes. M. O’Sullivan in Cameos of Crime
(1935) describes how in a conflict between
British and Australian soldiers during the
First World War, the Pommie ‘Tommies’
appear to have constructed an image of
Ned Kelly as an antipodean equivalent of
the English King:
In 1917, in France there were a number
of Australians and English soldiers
enjoying themselves in a saloon.
The Tommies, when having their
refreshment, drank to ‘The King’. One
of the bunch of Australians, who had had
four years of war and whose nerves were
raw, out of sheer cussedness, wanted to
shock the Tommies, gulped down his
liquor, at the same time saying: ‘Oh, to
hell with the King’. His own party took
no notice, but the English soldiers were
obviously very annoyed. They talked it
over seriously, and then two of them
advanced on the party of Australians,
and in a loud, defiant challenging voice
called out: ‘To hell with Ned Kelly!’
The British soldiers were no doubt
right in assuming that the Australians
idolised Ned Kelly; and perhaps, amid
the wartime flurries of Australian accents
and idioms, they had heard the phrase as
game as Ned Kelly—but the idolisation of
certain qualities in Ned Kelly would not
necessarily blind the Australians to the
reality of a ‘gameness’ in Kelly that was
perilously comic in its ultimate armour-clad
confrontation with the authorities. This is
not to underestimate the power of the antiauthoritarian myth that lies at the heart of
the Ned Kelly story; but the miscalculation
that equates ‘The King’ (of England) with
‘Ned Kelly’ (of Australia) is a misjudgment
both of the Australians and of the myth.
What I am suggesting is that the
Ned Kelly myth has always been open to
ambiguous meaning and interpretation.
This is especially true of the words and
idioms that the name Ned Kelly has
generated.
GAME AS NED KELLY
The most positive of these words and
idioms is the phrase as game as Ned Kelly,
meaning ‘extremely courageous’. This
idiom first appeared in a 1938 poem called
‘Militiaman’, inspired by the Spanish
Civil War: ‘Sleet-smarted face and snowfilled eye, / Vigilant in the dark before the
dawn/ Game as Ned Kelly.’ I have no doubt
that the syntactic pattern of this idiom is to
be traced to the comparable phrases game as
a pebble and game as a meat-ant. The ‘pebble’
of the former phrase is a transferred use
of the sense ‘stone’ to describe someone
who is ‘a tough or indomitable person’
or ‘a reprobate’ (Oxford English Dictionary
[OED]). While this began as an English
slang term, its subsequent use was mainly
Australian, and it was applied in Australia
to convicts and prisoners. In 1848 the
Port Phillip Herald in Melbourne reported:
‘A carpenter showed a note in one of the
public houses in town which circumstance
having been observed by three “pebbles”,
who were watching him outside, they
followed him till he got opposite the
Church, when they attacked and attempted
to rob him.’ The earliest use of game as a
pebble occurs in an 1829 British account
of a boxing match—‘Hudson, as game as
a pebble, stuck to his man like glue’—and
the ‘gameness’ thus displayed has its origin
in an animal metaphor: ‘Having the spirit
of a game-cock; full of pluck, showing
“fight”; plucky, spirited’ (OED). Thereafter,
it is an Australian term, first appearing here
in 1863. The variant game as a meat-ant is
exclusively Australian, and is first recorded
in 1932. A meat-ant (also called tyrant ant)
is any of various Australian ants, especially
Iridomyrmex purpureus, a mound-building
ant with a reddish head and purple body,
and capable of inflicting a painful bite
(Australian National Dictionary [AND]). The
‘gameness’ of a meat-ant is a very aggressive
quality indeed! When the new variant game
as Ned Kelly appears six years later (in 1938)
it slots into the template (as game as …) that
carries with it connotations of gameness
that include daring, risk-taking, cockiness,
and also aggression—the British OED
defines game as Ned Kelly as ‘very spirited
or brave’ (as, I think, the First World War
The australian national Dictionary Centre
A joint venture between
The Australian National University &
Oxford University Press
continued on page 2
WHO’S ROBBING THIS COACH?
NED KELLY AND AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH
Frederick Ludowyk
‘Tommies’ might have defined it), whereas
the Australian AND is more cautious:
‘fearless in the face of odds; foolhardy.’
Indeed, a complex range of connotations is often present when the idiom
game as Ned Kelly is called into use:
A common expression on the lips
of Aussies of both sexes to describe
someone engaged in a risky enterprise
is ‘he’s as game as Ned Kelly’. (S. Hope,
Diggers’ Paradise, 1956)
There was already a national chip on
the shoulder and those who felt it would
come out fighting or admire those
who did. To die ‘game as Ned Kelly’
would become part of the language.
(J. Murray, Larrikins, 1973)
The Holden and Ford are excellent
machines for running down ordinary
roads. Both ride and handle good and
bad roads with ease plus a fair degree
of enthusiasm and a tonne of balance.
Both are as game as Ned Kelly in the
rough. (Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 8
December, 2004)
And, like his brothers, he has no fear.
They are all mad that way. Mad, game
as Ned Kelly, but great young blokes.
(Herald-Sun, 3 June, 2006)
The ‘game’ qualities are admired, but they
are by no means the courageous ‘virtues’
of a saint! There is an edgy riskiness in that
courage, a dogged bucking of the system,
a bush roughness, and a mischievous madness that is as foolhardy as it is fearless. To
be as game as Ned Kelly is not to go forth
with the unambiguous, indeed simple,
indeed simplistic, spiritual courage of an
English St George.
WHO IS A ‘NED KELLY’? WHAT IS HE?
If there are glimmers of ambiguity in the
phrase as game as Ned Kelly, the ambiguity
becomes explicit in the figurative instances
where people are compared directly to Ned
Kelly. A Ned Kelly can be someone who is
a kind of maverick or larrikin, especially
someone who is resistant to overarching
authority and its symbols:
This Ned Kelly of colonial politics
may yet jockey himself into a local
immortality, as the father of Australian
Federation. (F.W.L. Adams, Australians,
1893)
David Boon: the Ned Kelly of the
cricketing 90s? The ... determined
Aussie battler taking on the might
of the international fast-paced firing
squads? (Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 23
October, 1993)
Even so, everyone knows that Ned Kelly
was also an outlaw and a thief, and a Ned
Kelly in Australian English is very commonly
page 2
someone ‘who is unscrupulous in seeking
personal gain’ (AND), especially in business
dealings:
Would you kindly allow me a small space
to expose the Ned Kelly methods of a
great majority of Sydney shopkeepers.
(Truth (Sydney), 17 November, 1918)
Included in this Ned Kelly category [is]
... the bloke who sells you a secondhand, guaranteed, ‘every bit as good
as new...’ vehicle, which falls to pieces
in the first hundred miles. (J. O’Grady,
Aussie English, 1965)
Mr. Bizzell said the council offered him
£740 for 74 perches of land. ... ‘They are
just Ned Kellys,’ he said. ‘They certainly
won’t put it back on the market without
making a handsome profit.’ (CourierMail (Brisbane), 20 August, 1974)
By the 1940s the term Kelly gang was not
simply a historical reference to Ned Kelly’s
band of bushrangers, but also ‘a term
applied to any business firm whose practices
are not above suspicion, and especially to
a ruling Government, with reference to
tax-grabbing propensities’ (S. Baker, A
Popular Dictionary of Australian Slang, 1941).
The term Ned Kelly by itself can have the
same allusive power, as when a subheading
in the Canberra Times (20 March, 2008)
attacked the Federal Government’s policy
on broadband services: ‘Broadband bill a
“Ned Kelly” raid on the Bush’.
In Melbourne, tram inspectors were
nicknamed kellies because of the puritanical
(and thoroughly unsporting!) vigour with
which they insisted that tickets should
be paid for, this quite ‘legal’ extraction
of money being conflated with Ned
Kelly’s illegal extractions. In some parts
of Australia the crow is called a Kelly or a
Kelly crow, and some writers attribute the
term to an association made between the
Kelly gang and crows: ‘“Kelly” for crow had
its genesis in the deeds of the Kelly gang.
Birds and bushrangers were addicted to
forays; hence “Those damn crows are just
like the Kellys”; hence “Kelly”. The name
is indiscriminately applied to crows and
ravens’ (Bulletin, 11 April, 1945). While
it is not entirely certain that Ned Kelly is
the origin of this word for a crow, it is also
not entirely certain why the term Ned Kelly
came to be applied to a kind of fishing
rig. Some have suggested that the Ned Kelly
rig is ‘unsporting’, but the evidence (from
1948 onwards) is not clear-cut. Here is a
description from the June 2007 edition of
Modern Fishing:
I would have been a little tacker fishing
off a riverbank with my Dad and my
Pop, using a long cane without a reel.
We called the poles ‘Ned Kellys’, and the
rig was simple: a length of line knotted
from the tip to halfway down the cane
behind each node. A slit cork was our
float and a split shot above the hook
kept our bait at the destined depth.
WHO IS DOING THIS ROBBING,
MAY I ASK?
One of the most fascinating developments
in the lexicon of Ned Kelly has been the
bushranger’s association with a story that
probably originates in the United States.
The earliest version of the story that I
have been able to find is in a rather risqué
(for its time) 1934 American text Anecdota
Americana:
The train came to a halt with a sudden
jar. Two men sprang into the aisles,
one tall man, the other short. Both
brandished guns. ‘Hands up everybody’,
yelled the tall man. ‘You men line up on
this side, women on the other. Now we
ain’t goin’ to hurt nobody that behaves.
Gents, shell out your dough and jewelry.
All the men are going to be robbed and
then we’ll see the women.’ ‘Easy now,
easy’, protested the smaller robber,
‘never mind that last. We’ll just cop the
dough and beat it.’ ‘You mind your own
business’, spoke up an old maid. ‘Who’s
robbing this train, I’d like to know.’
In the United States the story became
associated with the outlaw Jesse James, and
at a later date a somewhat homophobic
version arose, in which a drunken Jesse
James ‘mistakenly’ asserts that he will ‘rob
all the women and rape all the men’; to
his partner’s assertion that he perhaps got
that the wrong way round, a young gay man
pipes up: ‘Who’s robbing this train, you or
Mr James?’ Both versions of the story were
transferred to Australia and associated with
Ned Kelly, the Australian equivalent of
Jesse James, and the story was localised by
having the bushranger rob a coach rather
than a train (even though Ned Kelly, unlike
some other Aussie bushrangers, was not
a coach robber). Frank Hardy tells the
‘straight’ version in The Outcasts of Foolgarah
(1971), where Ned Kelly threatens to rob
all the men and rape all the women, and
is berated with the line ‘You can’t do that,
you dreadful man’, which prompts the
response from a female ‘Who’s robbing
this coach, you or Mister Kelly?’ The ‘gay’
version is related in the 1984 edition of
Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and
Unconventional English:
Ned Kelly and his gang held up a coach.
Ned gave orders to rape the men and
rob the women. One of his offsiders
said, ‘You mean, rob the men and rape
the women’. A passenger with a squeaky
voice exclaimed, ‘Who’s robbing this
coach?’
oZwords
April 2009
WHO’S ROBBING THIS COACH?
NED KELLY AND AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH
Frederick Ludowyk
We might debate the political correctness
of these yarns, but what is interesting for
the history of Australian English is that the
phrase who’s robbing this coach? has, in many
instances, become detached from its origin
in the Ned Kelly ‘coach’ version of an
American train robbery story. Sidney Baker
gives the idiom in the 1945 first edition of
The Australian Language, and comments:
‘Reputed to be associated with bushranging
days, this expression is equivalent to
“mind your own business”’. Baker knows
that the idiom has some connection with
bushranging, but he does not know of its
association with Ned Kelly. It is similarly
detached from its origin in E. Lambert’s
Twenty Thousand Thieves (1951): ‘Chip’s
boom shattered the ... feeling among
them: “Who’s robbing this coach? Do
you want to hear the news or not?”’ Who’s
robbing this coach? is an idiom that deserves
preservation, so I encourage you to use it as
a put-down line, especially when someone
is trying to interfere with your plans—who’s
robbing this coach! Perhaps we could elevate
it to the same heights as What do you think
this is—Bush Week?
VERBING NED KELLY
An eponymous word has perhaps truly
arrived when it transfers from a noun to
a verb. The term Ned Kelly has been used
as a verb meaning ‘to bushrange’: ‘Gipsy
Smith … Ned-Kellied on a small scale
about Bendigo in the days of the Forest
Range goldfield’ (Gadfly (Adelaide), 2
May, 1908). It has also been used as a verb
meaning ‘to kill (a bird etc.) unsportingly’:
‘When raising yourself above the bank of
a dam, go up very, very slowly ... and you
will have ample time to plan your shot,
whether you intend to “Ned Kelly” them
or take them on the wing’ (S.H. Edwards,
Shooting & Bushcraft, 1951). More recently,
the verb simply means ‘to rob’, as in this
extract from a letter to the Newcastle Herald
(27 October, 1999) complaining about an
increase in the price of a season ticket for
the Newcastle Knights: ‘Few people enjoy
being Ned Kellied or taken for schmucks.’
RHYME-SLANGING NED KELLY
Rhyming slang usually uses proper names
arbitrarily, and there is no surprise in the
fact that Australian English has used Ned
Kelly as rhyming slang for ‘belly’ from the
1940s. It is somewhat surprising, however,
to find that in Britain, since the 1970s, Ned
Kelly has been used as rhyming slang for
‘telly’. We have some slight evidence that
Ned Kelly has been used allusively in referring
to strong alcoholic drinks—a glossary from
the First World War uses Ned Kelly’s blood as
a term for red wine or vin rouge, and on a
few occasions Barry Humphries has used
the phrase Ned Kelly whisky.
such is life!”’—and the OED defines its use in
this way: ‘an exclamatory phrase now often
used trivially as an expression of resignation
or acquiescence in things as they are.’ After
Ned Kelly reportedly used the phrase Such is
life! as his last words before being hanged on
11 November 1880, it has assumed greater
weight in Australian culture, although still
with the primary sense ‘a philosophical
acceptance of the bad things that happen
in life’. The deep ambiguities at the heart
of the Ned Kelly myth were brought to the
fore when Brownlow-medallist Ben Cousins
was sacked by his Western Australian club
for various offences, and it was revealed
that he had the phrase Such is life tattooed
in large letters across his torso. The Age
(Melbourne) reported (20 October, 2007):
Cousins’ new tattoo, famously unveiled
on Tuesday, reads ‘Such is life’. In
Melbourne, the appropriation of Ned
Kelly has been mocked. In Perth, the
comparison with a charismatic victim
of police persecution is resonating.
Talkback radio was buzzing with callers
defending Cousins yesterday. The
switchboard at Eagles headquarters
was deluged with demands for his
reinstatement.
SUCH IS LIFE!
All in all, the lexical evidence would not
support the notion that Ned Kelly has
been embraced as a folk hero in Australia
in an unthinking and uncritical way. The
term such is life is first recorded in Charles
Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (1865)—‘With
a mournful air as who should say, “Here is
another wretched creature come to dinner;
Such is the fate of folk heroes. In Ned Kelly’s
case, the lexical record would suggest that
he is regarded in Australian culture as both
hero and villain. On the positive side, it is
difficult to think of another personal name
that has contributed so much to the wordhoard of our Australian English.
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page 3
Mailbag
Letters are welcome. Please address letters to: Frederick Ludowyk, Editor, Ozwords,
The Australian National Dictionary Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200
Email: [email protected] Fax: (02) 6125 0475
We welcome readers’ comments on their recent observations of Australian usage, both positive and negative,
and their queries, particularly those not easily answerable from the standard reference books.
In addition to letters sent directly to Ozwords,
the Dictionary Centre receives language
queries directly or via OWLS (the Oxford
World Language Service). Our reply goes
only to the person who sent in the query,
but the queries are often of interest to a
wider audience. The letters and answers in
this issue’s Mailbag are modified versions of
some of the queries we received in the past
twelve months. They are all presented now
as ‘anonymous’ queries. ED.
HUMMUS
From my observations the most common spelling
of the ‘dip made from ground chickpeas and
sesame oil flavoured with lemon and garlic’ is
hommos (although the spellings hoummus
and hummus are certainly around). I was
wondering if this is an Australian spelling of the
word?
When we first entered this word in our
Australian dictionaries we gave hummus as
the headword, with the variants hoummos
and hommos. The British OUP dictionaries
give hummus (with variant houmous). The
OUP American dictionary gives hummus
(with variants hoummos and humous). The
OUP Canadian dictionary gives hummus
(with the variant hommos). Another
common spelling, not represented in
these dictionaries, is hoummus. The
variants illustrate the fact that there is
still uncertainty about what to do with the
spelling of this term. Internet searches
indicate that hommos, hummus, and hoummus
are on a par in Australia, but that hoummos
is ahead of them all. Australian newspaper
evidence, however, shows an overwhelming
preference for hummus, followed by
hommos, with hoummus and hoummos hardly
represented at all. The word comes from
Arabic hummus, and this spelling, preferred
by the major dictionaries, may turn out to
be the eventual victor in English.
CONTINENTAL
I have been doing some work on the history
of a local school, and came across the word
‘Continental’ being used in the 1930s to advertise
a type of entertainment in conjunction with a
fete. Do you know anything of its origin?
In 2001 one of our readers noted that in the
Official Programme for the January 1901
Federation celebrations there is a series of
‘continentals’: ‘Continental in Domain, 7.30
p.m.’ In 1900 the West Australian newspaper
advertised a ‘continental concert’: ‘This
(Wednesday) evening another continental
concert will be given at the Zoological
Gardens at South Perth. The gardens will
be illuminated as on Saturday night last,
and a specially attractive programme of
instrumental music has been arranged.’
page 4
These continentals appear to be musical
entertainments, and are not necessarily the
same thing as the 1930s fetes. The earliest
reference we have been able to find to
a ‘continental fete’ is in the Melbourne
Argus on 2 April 1917, with a reference to
such a fete in the south-western Victorian
town of Warrnambool: ‘Warrnambool. A
“Continental fete” held to provide comforts
for soldiers in the trenches brought £1,103.
The stallholders decided to endeavour to
send the amount direct to the soldiers.’
This provides the important information
that the ‘Continental fete’ was a fundraiser,
and that money was raised by selling things
at stalls. The second record we have been
able to find is from the north-western
Victorian town of Ararat, in the Melbourne
Argus on 21 August 1918: ‘A successful
continental fete was held under the
auspices of the Citizens’ Welcome Home
Committee, to raise funds to purchase gold
medals to present to soldiers who have
enlisted from Ararat.’ When we move to
the 1930s, these ‘continentals’ are still in
vogue. In 1930 the Canberra Times had a
subheading ‘continental fete’ followed by:
‘A continental to be held in St Christopher’s
school grounds to-night will be the first
of its kind to be held in Canberra. The
Canberra City Band will be in attendance
while there will also be numerous novel
attractions.’ In the Brisbane Courier Mail in
1934 there is a reference to a ‘Continental
dance’: ‘A profit of £19/9/ was made by
the Dalby Ambulance Centre from the
proceeds of a Continental dance.’ There
is a photograph entitled ‘Maypole Dancing
at the Continental Fete, Port Macquarie,
NSW’ in 1924 at the website: <http://
acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.
aspx?itemID=393089#>. It is not yet
clear if the ‘continental dance’ and the
‘continental fete’ are synonymous terms.
It is clear, however, that the continental
fete was a fundraiser of the kind that we
would now associate with school fetes, and
that in the earlier period it was used for
fundraising for various purposes. Why the
term ‘continental’ was introduced remains
a mystery, and we should be glad to receive
any suggestions from our readers.
A BAR OF SOAP
I was recently asked to comment by a local radio
station on the following expression: ‘wouldn’t
know him from a bar of soap’. It seemed so
familiar to me that I thought it would be easy to
track down everything I needed to know. However,
although I know the meaning, and know that
it is Australian, nobody seems to know why ‘a
bar of soap’, rather than, for example, the more
familiar ‘Adam’. If I read it literally it seems to
indicate that the speaker is no more familiar with
soap than with the stranger in question—which
seems to reflect rather poorly on their attitude to
personal hygiene?
The international expression that you
allude to—not to know a person from Adam—
was first recorded in 1784. The variant not
to know a person (or something) from a bar of
soap appears first in New Zealand in 1903:
‘Didn’t know the game [of golf] from a
bar of soap.’ It is next used in Australia,
in 1918: ‘Don’t know ’im from a bar of
soap.’ Thereafter it is widely used in both
Australia and New Zealand, as in this
passage from Kylie Tennant’s 1943 novel
Ride on Stranger: ‘“Why doesn’t she marry
the child’s father?” … “It’s my belief she
doesn’t know him from a bar of soap.”’ It is
unlikely that hygiene was the issue that gave
rise to the idiom. In this age of soaps that
come in so many shapes, forms, smells, and
colours, it is easy to forget that in earlier
days all bars of soap looked much the same.
One member of the Dictionary Centre
commented: ‘it alludes to the anonymous
nature of rectangular (yellow) bars of
soap, produced by the indistinguishable
thousands on production lines in factories.
The allusion works well because it’s such a
common commodity.’
WOG NIGHTS
I was doing some casual research on the word wog
in Aussie English and found many references to
wog nights, wog socials, wog parties, and so
on, in the Canberra Times in the 1930s: ‘The
Christmas party of the club is to take the form of a
“wog” night and dance’; ‘A Christmas social …
“Wogging” was the principal pastime, and those
uninitiated into the game have something yet to
live for’; ‘The Library Committee is arranging a
Wog Afternoon’. What are these so-called wog
games?
The mystery was solved in November 2008
by a caller-in to ABC Canberra 666, which
has a fortnightly language show with Bruce
Moore on Genevieve Jacobs’ afternoon
show. The wog game was elsewhere called
the beetle game, and it is a variant of hangman.
People roll the dice, and bits of the beetle
are constructed from the fall of the dice:
a six gives the body, a one gives a leg, etc.
There were tables of people playing the
game, a bit like our contemporary trivia
nights. This is interesting early evidence
of the Australian sense of wog meaning
‘an insect or grub’, a sense that probably
morphed into the Australian ‘microbe or
germ, a “bug”, an illness’. The first quotation
above is from 1937, and this predates our
previous evidence by one year.
oZwords
April 2009
JUSTUS ANGWIN
We were greatly saddened to learn of
the death of Justus Angwin on 25 March
2009. I first had contact with Justus in the
mid 1990s when he sent some letters with
questions about and comments on some of
the entries in the Australian Concise Oxford
Dictionary. These questions and comments
on our dictionaries continued into 2009.
They were always astute and knowledgeable,
and helped us to improve many of our
dictionary entries. When Justus learned
of the Australian National Dictionary
Project, he started to collect citations for
us from newspapers and books, and came
to be our most valued voluntary reader. He
provided numerous updatings for the new
edition of the Australian National Dictionary
and alerted us to potential new Australian
words. He sent in thousands of citations.
So expert did he become in the collecting
of citations, that we were able to send him
lists of gaps in our evidence, and he would
fill in the gaps with citation evidence. Our
deepest sympathy goes to his wife Dot and
to the rest of his family.
BOOK LAUNCH
Bruce Moore’s book Speaking Our Language:
The Story of Australian English was launched
at the Research School of Humanities,
Australian National University, on 9 October
2008. Speakers included Professor Ian
Chubb, Vice-Chancellor of the Australian
National University, and Dr Henry Reece,
Chief Executive of Oxford University Press.
A podcast of the launch is available at
<www.anu.edu.au/discoveranu/content/
podcasts/speaking_our_language_the_
story_of_australian_english/>. The book
has received excellent reviews, and is widely
available at bookshops.
AUSTRALEX IN NEW ZEALAND
A conference of Australex (the Australasian
Association for Lexicography) was held in
Wellington, New Zealand, on 13 and 14
November 2008. It was expertly organised
and hosted by Dr Dianne Bardsley, Director
of the New Zealand Dictionary Centre.
Three members of the ANDC gave papers:
Bruce Moore, ‘“Hands Across the Ditch”:
The Uses and Abuses of Sidney Baker’s Work in
Historical Lexicography’ ; Dorothy Jauncey,
‘Hundreds of Names, Thousands of Spellings:
Aboriginal Language Names in a New Edition
of the Australian National Dictionary’ ; and
Bernadette Hince, ‘Food Words of the Arctic’.
Sarah Ogilvie of Trinity College, Oxford,
who was a visiting fellow at the ANDC from
August to November 2008, also gave a
paper at the Australex Conference: ‘World
Englishes and the Historical Dictionary’.
DICTIONARY PUBLICATIONS
A number of OUP dictionaries edited
by Mark Gwynn were published in 2008.
These included The Australian School
Dictionary (4th edn) and The Australian
School Dictionary and Thesaurus (3rd edn).
April 2009
oZwords
From
the
Centre
The Australian National
Dictionary Centre
The Australian National Dictionary
Centre is jointly funded by Oxford University
Press Australia and The Australian
National University to research all aspects of
Australian English and to publish Australian dictionaries and
other works.
Mark has recently completed a new edition
of the Australian Integrated School Dictionary
and Thesaurus, and this will be published
later in 2009. Bruce Moore has just
completed a new edition of the Australian
Concise Oxford Dictionary, adding some 1700
new entries, and this too will be published
later in 2009.
ONLINE
The Word of the Month continues to be
distributed by email, and if you would
like to subscribe to it, send an email to
[email protected]. A reminder, too, that the Australian National Dictionary
has been made available free online by
Oxford University Press at <www.oup.com.
au/and>.
HASHMAGANDY
Someone wrote to the Centre to enquire
about the word hashmagandy. He recalled
hearing it in England in the 1960s when
the BBC broadcast a film (made by BP)
called Cattle Carters. It was about a roadtrain
travelling through the Australian outback.
The enquirer describes the crucial scene:
‘the driver picks up an English hitchhiker,
and when they stop for a meal the cans of
food they are carrying have lost all their
labels as the heat has melted the glue.
The driver tells the hitchhiker to open
up a few cans and stew whatever comes
out (peaches, meat etc.). He calls the
concoction hashmagandy.’ The enquirer
went on to note that later, when he was in
the Caribbean, he came across the word
salmagundi (‘(a) a dish of chopped meat,
anchovies, eggs, onions, etc., and seasoning;
(b) a general mixture’), and wondered if
there were any connection between the
international salmagundi and the Australian
hashmagandy.
Hashmagandy was in the first edition of
the Australian National Dictionary, but with
very limited evidence. W.H. Downing, in
Digger Dialects (1919), defined hashmagandy
as ‘an insipid and monotonous army dish’,
and Sidney Baker in The Australian Language
(1945) gave hash-me-gandy for ‘stew’. These
two entries provided the evidence for the
sense ‘a stew’. There was also an entry, with
one piece of evidence from the Bulletin in
1944, for hashmagandy bag. This was a potato
sack containing ‘cooked-to-rags mutton’
from a ‘boiling-down works’, and used as a
kind of burley bag in fishing.
We now have further evidence for the
early Australian use of this term to describe
the refuse of boiling-down establishments,
which were places where fat was separated
from animal carcasses in the preparation
of tallow. An 1893 document defines
the boiled carcase as hashmagandy. After
the industrial process was complete the
‘hashmagandy ... [was] drawn out from
the bottom doors of the vat and raked into
trucks ... taken away and stored ready for
sale as one of the best possible manures
for orchards and vineyards’. The term was
still remembered in the 1960s, as in this
passage from the Australian Women’s Weekly
in 1968: ‘I learnt a new word one night.
Hashmagandi. It is a word that belongs to
the olden times, and refers to the residue
left after cattle had been boiled down for
tallow.’ One of the common uses of this
waste was for burley in fishing, as explained
by this 1905 document: ‘These fishermen
procure from a boiling-down establishment,
where diseased sheep, oxen, and horses are
reduced to glue and other useful articles,
the residuum, an awfully stinking substance
called Hashmagandy, compared to which
burley is a delicious perfume.’
The earliest reference to hashmagandy
as ‘stew’ is in W.S. Walker’s 1899 text
From the Land of the Wombat, where the
following reference occurs: ‘Get up, I’m
cook this morning. What will you have,
eh? “Hashmagandy” or “pufterloonas”?’
Puftaloon is an Australian word for ‘a small
fried cake, usually spread with jam, sugar,
or honey’. Even with this extra evidence, it
is still not clear if the ‘boiled-down carcase’
sense is the original sense, and the ‘stew’ a
very ironic transferred sense, or the other
way around.
Can the etymology solve this
conundrum? The hash part of the word no
doubt comes from the standard sense of
hash meaning ‘something cut up into small
pieces, especially a dish consisting of meat
which has been previously cooked, cut
small, and warmed up with gravy and sauce
or other flavouring’ (OED), and then (in a
transferred sense) ‘a mixture of mangled
and incongruous fragments’ (OED). It
seems that this term was then blended with
salmagundi (a term that has very similar
literal and transferred meanings). The
subsequent blend could have been applied
to either of the Australian senses, and so it
is still not clear which sense came first.
BRUCE MOORE
DIRECTOR
page 5
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Bruce Moore
A number of the new entries that will
find their way into the second edition of
the Australian National Dictionary derive
from the allusive use of personal names
(including the names of some animals).
Many of these were in existence at the
time of the publication of the first edition
(1988), but there was obviously not enough
evidence available to the editors to justify
an entry in AND. This article sets out some
of the new entries, and explains how their
inclusion is now justified.
A BERNBOROUGH FINISH
Bernborough (1939–60) was a Queenslandbred racehorse who competed especially
in the years 1941–46, at one stage winning
fourteen races in succession. He often
carried very heavy weights, and had a
reputation for coming from well behind
and winning his races. The phrase a
Bernborough finish came to mean ‘a fast
and successful finish to a race or other
enterprise, after a competitor has been well
behind’. It can be used of a horse, as in this
example: ‘Tear, an eight-year-old stallion ...
trailed the field to the home turn and put
in a “Bernborough” finish to snatch victory
on the post’ (Sun-Herald, 6 November,
1966). It can also be used of other forms of
sporting competition. Indeed, the earliest
use of the phrase a Bernborough finish that
we have been able to find refers to a rugby
match. A subheading ‘Bernborough Finish
by Manuka’ in the Canberra Times 8 July
1946 refers to a game where the rugby
team Manuka stormed home to defeat
Ainslie, when it had seemed that Ainslie
were certain winners: ‘At Manuka Oval,
Ainslie, unluckiest team of the competition,
suffered a five-points defeat by Manuka after
seeming certain of victory with five minutes
to play.’ In 1985 the Brisbane Courier-Mail
(18 January) used the phrase to refer to
Andrew Peacock’s better-than-expected
performance in the 1984 Federal election:
‘Mr Peacock ... staged a “Bernborough
finish” in the election race but still finished
in the minor placings.’
THE BRADMAN OF...
The Australian cricketer Don Bradman
(1908–2001) is generally regarded as the
finest cricketer of all time anywhere, with a
test batting average of 99.94. He began his
test career in 1928 and retired in 1948. The
phrase the Bradman of is commonly used in
Australia to designate someone who is the
best in their field or the finest exponent of
some skill. The earliest use of this idiom
that we have been able to find is in the
Courier-Mail 4 October 1933, where a writer
comments on the fact that politicians need
to be extraordinarily versatile and able to
comment on a range of matters, including
‘the prospects of the Treasurer topping
page 6
the score as the Bradman of deficits’. The
designated field of excellence is often sport:
‘Death of Walter Lindrum: The “Bradman”
of billiards’ (Sun-Herald, 31 July, 1960).
But it can be any field of endeavour: ‘Not
long ago, at a Canberra market, I bought a
book by the Bradman of travel writing, Paul
Theroux’ (Age (Melbourne), 12 March,
2005).
CHESTY BOND
Chesty Bond is the muscled and squarejawed character created in 1938 to advertise
singlets made by the Bonds company.
The character also appeared in a popular
cartoon, where he turned himself into a
superhero when he donned the Chesty
Bond vest. The term Chesty Bond is used
allusively in Australia to refer to a wellmuscled and sexy male. Typical examples:
‘Regardless of your sexual bent, the blacksingleted “Chesty Bond” barmen provide
more than enough to look at’ (S. Neal
& S. Guest, Sydney Pubs, 2000); ‘A former
rugby player, champion showjumper and
basketball player, Jud Arthur radiates raw
sexuality along with his Chesty Bond good
looks’ (Australian, 13 November, 2004).
As a male ideal, the muscled Chesty bond
may be in retreat before the metrosexual and
finely-toned tradie, but he still has a place
in the Aussie pantheon: ‘Speak of ironmen
and big Trev immediately comes to mind.
Tall, strapping Chesty Bond type who had
that certain aura about him that meant you
always looked twice’ (Gold Coast Bulletin, 20
May, 2005). Given the latest financial news,
the chesty Chesty Bond stereotype may be
in for some popular deflation.
CROCODILE DUNDEE
Crocodile Dundee is the name of the 1986
comedy film, starring Paul Hogan, set in
the Australian Outback and New York. The
hero, Mick Dundee, is a macho and laconic
character, regarded by some, at least,
as quintessentially Australian. The term
Crocodile Dundee is used allusively to refer to
the stereotypical outback Australian male.
In the year following the worldwide release
of the film, the Crocodile Dundee type was
in demand in America: ‘Two weeks ago an
ad agency phoned him and said it wanted
a “Crocodile Dundee type” to advertise a
menswear store on Long Island. Cheshire
had to walk in the store and say “G’day,
mates. What a pity we don’t have clothes
like this in the outback”’ (Sydney Morning
Herald, 3 August, 1987). Two decades later,
the type was still in demand: ‘A Melbourne
man has reportedly been cast as a Crocodile
Dundee-type hero in a US reality TV dating
show to be filmed in Australia. Vadim Dale
is reported to be the male lead for the new
US show Outback Jack, which puts 12 “high
maintenance” American city women in
the Outback, where they compete to win
his affections’ (Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 26
April, 2004).
DAD AND DAVE
The entry for Dad and Dave in the Australian
Oxford Dictionary reads: ‘two fictional
characters from the stories and books of
Steele Rudd (1868–1935). Rudd, while
treating Dad and Dave humorously, made
them representative of all who aspired
to be small farmers. In the hands of filmmakers and others they have tended to
become crude symbols of rural stupidity.’
The original Rudd sense is perhaps
represented in this passage from 1939 in
Australia: National Journal (Sydney): ‘All
sorts of people—Dad and Dave from the
backblocks, artists, University students.’
The original sense is still to the fore in the
recent links that have been made between
Steele Rudd and Kevin Rudd: ‘Still, if the
new ALP leader has to blaze a trail for his
first name, his surname is rich with battler
credibility, harking back to the nation’s
archetypal working family, Dad and Dave’
(Age (Melbourne), 17 December, 2006).
More typically, the allusions refer to the
unsophisticated and stupid yokels: ‘On
the farmlands the trees were ringbarked in
their hundreds of thousands, and behind
post-and-rail fences they often stood in
their pale cemeteries for five or fifteen
years before Dad and Dave burned them
down’ (Australian, 4 October, 1974).
GINGER MEGGS
The entry for Ginger Meggs in the Australian
Oxford Dictionary reads: ‘a very popular
Australian comic-strip character created by
the artist James Bancks (1889–1952). The
strip first appeared in the Sydney Sun in
1921, but was soon syndicated nationally
and
internationally.
Ginger
Meggs
represents the idealised Australian boy,
honest, good-hearted, but mischievous.
He is often in trouble with his parents and
is always battling with “Tiger” Kelly, the
district’s bad boy.’ The term Ginger Meggs
is often used allusively to refer to people
who exhibit the qualities embodied in
Ginger Meggs—from mischievous boy to
Australian par excellence. The earliest
comparison of someone with Ginger
Meggs that we have been able to find is in
the Canberra Times 28 November 1934: ‘A
diminutive, freckle-faced lad—he might
have been Ginger Meggs—stood trembling
before Mr. A.G. Hardwick, P.M., in the
Canberra Court of Petty Sessions yesterday,
while a charge under the Federal Territory
truancy regulations was preferred against
his father.’ Typical later examples include:
‘Some sixth sense [made] her turn round
to see her 4-year-old Ginger Meggs gleefully
clinging to the roller door of the garage as
oZwords
April 2009
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Bruce Moore
it ascended’ (Sunday Mail (Brisbane), 11
May, 2003); ‘Our dad was a quintessential
Sydney bloke of his generation, a cheeky
urban larrikin, a Ginger Meggs’ (Daily
Telegraph, 31 July, 2004); ‘For all the anger
in his legs, Bayley [a competitive cyclist] has
a Ginger Meggs charm off the bike that is a
breath of fresh air in a sport that can often
be aggressive and strife-torn’ (Australian,
20 March, 2006).
HANRAHAN
Hanrahan is the lugubrious and pessimistic
doomsayer of John O’Brien’s poem ‘Said
Hanrahan’, published in 1921. Whatever
the weather, Hanrahan predicts that all
will be ‘rooned’ (this word being his
pronunciation of ‘ruined’):
‘We’ll all be rooned,’ said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn. ...
‘If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,’ said Hanrahan,
‘Before the year is out.’
In many allusions to this poem, the tone
of the original is evoked by citing both the
name Hanrahan and the ‘rooned’ lament:
‘It is a feature of life in this country that
there exists a number of Hanrahans who
believe and preach that “we’ll all be rooned
before the year is out”’ (Australian Infantry,
September, 1972); ‘The message for wool
growers as the season ended last week was:
“Don’t let the gloom merchants drive you
out of the business.” Despite what Hanrahan
and his followers might say, we’re not all
ruined’ (Weekly Times, 1 July, 1998). In its
most advanced form, only one part of the
allusion (‘Hanrahan’ or ‘rooned’) need
be cited: ‘Qantas Boss Geoff Nixon is a
hanrahan on what will happen to his airline
unless it keeps cutting costs to compete
with international carriers’ (Australian, 18
January, 2005).
PHAR LAP
Phar Lap (1926–32) was the name of a
champion racehorse, and his name is used
by itself or in various phrases that allude
to the horse’s reputation for excellence:
‘Three blokes in blue singlets shove and
squeeze me into the car, the pride of the
Ford fleet. It’s won 13 touring car races and
it’s the Phar Lap of V8s’ (Herald-Sun, 10
September, 2005). The idiom a heart as big
as Phar Lap’s alludes to the horse’s strength
and staying power, and especially to the
fact that his heart (displayed in museums
after his death) was twice the weight of
a normal horses’s. The idiom is used to
indicate great courage, generosity, or
power: ‘He had a heart as big as Phar Lap’s
and was determined to keep up the battle,
no matter what hand he was dealt’ (HeraldSun, 7 March, 2002); ‘But it’s a magnificent
April 2009
oZwords
wine, packed with flavor, as clean as a
whistle and capable of developing, with a
few years’ bottling, a heart as big as Phar
Lap’s’ (Advertiser (Adelaide), 10 February,
1998). Phar Lap almost always ran as a
short-priced favourite, and the phrase Phar
Lap odds has come to mean ‘extremely
short odds’: ‘The PT Cruiser is selling like
hot cakes in America and it is at Phar Lap
odds to do the same in Australia (Sunday
Mail, 6 August, 2000).
THE SENTIMENTAL BLOKE
C.J. Dennis (1876–1938) published Songs of
a Sentimental Bloke in 1915, although parts
of it had been published in the Bulletin
magazine from 1909. In this verse novel,
rich in Australian idiom, the rough town
larrikin Bill is transformed by his love for
Doreen, and comes to praise the values of
love, marriage, and family. It ends:
Sittin’ at ev’nin’ in this sunset-land,
Wiv ‘Er in all the World to ’old me ’and,
A son, to bear me name when I am gone. ...
Livin’ an’ lovin’—so life mooches on.
The Sentimental Bloke is perhaps unusual in
the history of Australian literature in that
an immensely popular text (it sold 100,000
copies in its first four years) finds its central
values in an urban setting rather than in
the bush. The phrase sentimental bloke often
occurs in Australian writing, and when it
does it draws some of its significance from
the allusion to the world, and the values of
the world, that is created in Dennis’s poem:
‘On the Darling Downs Len Kahler is as
tough as they come, but when it comes to
his land, he’s a sentimental kind of bloke’
(Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 21 April, 1993);
‘Perhaps it’s an excuse for a sentimental
bloke to re-live his memories, but Fox is
spending a lot of time catching up with the
friends of his youth. ... Every week brings
some long-lost friend or half-forgotten
truckie in need of help and Fox has a
reputation as a softie for charities involving
children’ (Australian Financial Review, 20
October, 2000).
THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER
This is the title of a poem by Banjo Paterson,
first published in the Bulletin magazine in
1890. It tells of a chase after a valuable colt
from ‘Old Regret’, successfully completed
only by a rider from the Snowy River
country, when all the other riders baulk
at the wild country to which the colt has
escaped:
He hails from Snowy River, up by
Kosciusko’s side,
Where the hills are twice as steep and
twice as rough,
Where a horse’s hoofs strike firelight from the
flint stones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains
make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first
commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen.
The poem was turned into a successful film
in 1982. The phrase the man from Snowy River
is used allusively in Australian English to
evoke some aspect of the ballad—especially
the traits illustrated by the man himself,
and also the nature of the country from
which he hails: ‘Two hundred mountain
cattlemen led yesterday’s demonstration,
aggrieved at being banned from grazing in
the Alpine National Park and claiming that
Mr Bracks “was killing the man from Snowy
River”’ (Australian, 21 November, 2006);
‘Produced in cool Man from Snowy River
country, this wine shows lean, tight, lemonfresh aromas’ (Sun-Herald, 8 September,
1996).
SPEED GORDON
Flash Gordon was the name of an American
science fiction hero, first appearing in
a comic strip in the 1930s; his name was
changed from Flash Gordon to Speed Gordon
in Australia because the underworld
connotations of the term flash (‘connected
with thieves’) were still current. Sci-fi
heroes, by definition, get themselves into
extraordinary predicaments, from which
they must escape, and in response to this
in Australia the phrase in more trouble than
Speed Gordon (or in more strife than Speed
Gordon) arose, meaning ‘in a great deal of
trouble’. Although Flash Gordon has now
replaced Speed Gordon in comics and films
in Australia, the Speed Gordon idiom can
still be heard, as in this extract from the
Daily Telegraph 9 October 2007: ‘Refereeing
groups bearing links to the FFA [Football
Federation Australia] were last night
reluctant to voice their disapproval, with
one apprehensive delegate saying: “If I
speak out I’ll be in more trouble than
Speed Gordon.”’
WALLA WALLA
Walla Walla (1922–52) was the name of
an Australian trotting horse who was so
successful that he often received large
handicaps in his races, sometimes starting
up to 260 metres behind the other
horses. The phrase further back (or behind)
than Walla Walla can refer to someone
or something that is well behind either
literally or figuratively: ‘Businesses faithfully
practise fire drills that go further back than
Walla Walla’ (Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 17
April, 2008). Even with his huge handicaps,
however, Walla Walla often stormed home to
win, and the phrase is also used to describe
any competitor who wins in this manner:
‘Dancing Dagger ... had punters ripping up
their tickets mid-race before coming home
from further back than Walla Walla to win’
(Newcastle Herald, 25 April, 2005).
page 7
Ozwords Competition
OZWORDS COMPETITION
NO. 31: RESULTS
Ernest Hemingway, when challenged to
write a novel in six words, came up with:
‘For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.’ He
is said to have claimed that this was the
best novel he’d ever written. Readers were
asked to write the Great Australian Novel in
6 words à la Hemingway.
Honourable Mentions (alphabetical by
surname of entrant).
‘White man came. Terra Nullius. Sorry’ (J.
Aitken, Vic.); ‘“Holt’s gone!” “Stumped?”
“No: caught (sub)”’ (G. Case, Qld);
‘Leadbeater’s possums? Never in Moonee
Ponds!’ (G. Case, Qld); ‘Baz tried what
God already perfected’ (T. Edmonds, WA);
‘Eh? Ned who? You want what?’ (E. Gibson,
NSW); ‘Tuckerbox dog told to piss off’ (C.
Gregoriou, Vic.); ‘Danger! “Look out!” Sadly,
mate did’ (L. Grosse, ACT); ‘Wentworth
aristocracy resurrected. Downer crowned
king’ (P. Harley, SA); (Romantic novel):
‘Married—Quarter acre—Picket fence—
Died’ (H. Hogerheyde, Qld); ‘Bunyip
growled. Boy curious. Boy missing’ (G.
Hurle, Vic.); ‘Great Aussie novel vanishes.
Silverfish suspected’ (G. Hurle, Vic.);
‘Migrant literacy test. Cadibarrawirracanna.
All failed’ (D. Mercer, SA); ‘Tree change.
Combi stuffed. Mallee roots’ (H. Passamani,
WA); ‘Kakadu romance: “wolt thou?” she
wilted’ (V. Praed, WA); ‘Merinos sold.
Sought seachange. Bought marina’ (S.
Robson, Qld); ‘We came, saw, conquered,
stole. Sorry’ (P. Sainsbury, NSW); ‘Vinnies
window. Tiny thongs. Brand new’ (apologies
to Hemingway) (C. Saxby, Vic.); ‘City
battler. Sea changer. City battler’ (D. Tribe,
NSW); ‘Baby gone. Mother blamed. Dingo
smirks’ (W. Williamson, Vic.); ‘Schools
reintroduce grammar. Litteracy grately
improoved’ (T. Wybrew, NSW).
Equal 2nd Prize (books to the value
of $50 from the OUP catalogue): ‘After
Ludwig Leichhardt t’ings became voss’
(Gilbert Case, Qld); ‘Didn’t get off at
Redfern. Dad’ (Jim Dewar, NSW)
1st Prize (books to the value of $100
from the OUP catalogue): ‘Tucker bag.
Jumbuck-sized. Water damaged’ (Carl
Savage, Qld). ED.
OZWORDS COMPETITION NO. 32
Australia and all its States have floral
emblems, to wit, plants officially adopted
by the Nation (and in Australia also by
each State or Territory) as a symbol. These
emblems are: (of Australia) the golden
wattle; (of the Australian Capital Territory)
the royal bluebell; (of New South Wales) the
waratah; (of the Northern Territory) Sturt’s
desert rose; (of Queensland) the Cooktown
orchid; (of South Australia) Sturt’s desert pea;
(of Tasmania) the Tasmanian blue gum; (of
Victoria) the pink form of Epacris impressa, the
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oZwords
common heath; (of Western Australia) the redand-green kangaroo paw.
Australia and all its States also have
faunal emblems, to wit, an animal or
animals officially adopted as a symbol by
the Nation, a State, or a Territory. These
emblems are: (of Australia) the kangaroo
and the emu; (of the Australian Capital
Territory) the gang-gang cockatoo; (of New
South Wales) the platypus and the kookaburra;
(of the Northern Territory) the red kangaroo
and the wedge-tailed eagle; (of Queensland)
the koala and the brolga; (of South Australia)
the hairy-nosed wombat and the piping shrike;
(of Tasmania, unofficial) the Tasmanian
devil; (of Victoria) Leadbeater’s possum and
the helmeted honeyeater; (of Western Australia)
the numbat and the black swan.
Of all the worldwide Oxford dictionaries, it is only in the Australian Oxford
dictionaries that floral emblem appears as
a term in its own right. Internet evidence
shows, however, that floral emblem is
certainly used in many countries, alongside
such synonyms as national flower, state flower,
and province flower. Faunal emblem, however,
seems to be an Australian term solely.
But, for some reason beyond the
present mental purlieus of your editor
(thinks: maybe it is a case of rampant
emblematologophobia) Australia and all of its
States are sadly lacking in verbal emblems.
This was not always the case: the country
was once emblematologoi-enriched to the
eyeteeth. I call to witness the emblematic
word yaffler (‘a loud, obnoxious person’) that still enriches Tasmania, or
Bananabender, the emblematic word that
some people think sums up the inhabitants
of our Prime Minister’s State, or Cornstalk,
the emblematically gangly word, now alas
defunct, that expressed the very essence
of a New South Welshman. You are asked
to choose an emblematologos (there ain’t
no such word, of course, but, inspired by
the Dumpty Humpty, I choose it to mean
‘a verbal emblem’) either for Australia or
for any of the States and Territories. For
example, you might choose a word that
is only used in a particular State (such as
yaffler); or, you might be impressively witty
and create your own coinage. Give us the
word of your choice, nominate the State
etc. to which you apply it, and energise us
with a brief explanation as to why you made
that choice. Enter as often as you wish, but
do, I implore you, be witty. ED.
Entries close 31 JULY 2009.
Entries sent by email should also
contain a snail mail address. All
entries should be sent to the editor.
Address for Articles & LetterS
Frederick Ludowyk
Editor, Ozwords
Australian National Dictionary Centre
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
Fax: (02) 6125 0475
Email: [email protected]
Deadline for next issue:
31 july 2009
Payment: The publisher reserves the right
to edit or not to publish letters and articles
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ISSN 1321-0858
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